Trellis on a post

Here is a trellis idea for those with limited area or space or access to a place to grow your climbing plants. I have a wonderful porch and patio area, but my house faces west with south spot to grow vines that like to climb. I realized that I have wonderful posts for something to climb, but no way to plant or for the vines to attach. Here is my solution.

Morning Glories climbing lattice.

I will give you a step by step on how I did this, so you have an idea. Mostly I used what I could find. First off, the plant is in a large pot. I have four posts, which turn into three walk through areas. I placed four pots, two in each of the outside walk through and left the middle area to actually walk through. See picture below.

The posts are load bearing to hold the walk out porch above, and instead of allowing the wood to be weathered, I had the contractors wrap them with the trim of our steel siding. Not such a good idea after I realized I was looking for a way to grow vines. So, I started digging in the shop where all of the left overs from the redo on the house. I found a partial sheet of lattice left over from the work done on the bottom of the big porch. See that picture below.

Lattice under porch

I knew that if I cut the lattice into strips and nailed them straight to the post there would be no room for the vines to grow, so I again started digging and found some abandoned trim boards. I think in one case it was headed for the dumpster, and being a recycler, I salvaged it to nail to the post. See two pictures below.

Board behind lattice

Post with lattice

These pictures  sort of give you an idea of the boards behind them. The picture to the left gives you a bit of a close up of the lattice over the board and the picture on the right gives you a bit of an overview. Oh yes, the sheets were 4×8 and I ended up cutting about 4 inches by 4 feet then putting two pieces on each post. You can see how I placed the edges together on the picture to the right. When the vines are fully grown, you don’t realize that it isn’t one complete piece. They also sometimes wind around the posts and come back to the lattice. In the picture to the right, you can see the far post and get an idea of what it looks like from the back. I chose to only put the lattice on one side of the post, but I am sure it would look great on both sides as well. In years past, I put a geranium in each of the pots with the morning glories, but then when frost time hit, it was always a hassle about pulling the pots inside or covering them. This year, it is morning glories only, and they seem to be enjoying their exclusive rights to the pots. Happy growing!!